Clinton Foundation Confirms $1 Million Gift from Qatar while Hillary was Secretary of State

In what should be a surprise to no one, the Clinton Foundation has finally seen fit to confirm that the Qatari government gave $1 million to the foundation during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state and failed to submit the donation to the department for review. The donation was revealed in emails leaked last month.

When Hillary joined the Obama administration in 2009, she signed an agreement saying that any donations from new foreign governments or increases in donations from existing foreign government donors to her and her husband’s legacy foundation would be disclosed to State for review. According toReuters, however:

At least eight other countries besides Qatar gave new or increased funding to the foundation, in most cases to fund its health project, without the State Department being informed, according to foundation and agency records. They include Algeria, which gave for the first time in 2010, and the United Kingdom, which nearly tripled its support for the foundation’s health project to $11.2 million between 2009 and 2012.

Foundation officials have said some of those donations, including Algeria, were oversights and should have been flagged, while others, such as the UK increase, did not qualify as material increases.

The foundation has declined to describe what sort of increase in funding by a foreign government would have triggered notification of the State Department for review. Cookstra said the agreement was designed to “allow foreign funding for critical Clinton Foundation programs” to continue without disruption.

The State Department said it has no record of being asked by the foundation to review any increases in support by a foreign government.

Emphasis added.

Um, what? A tripling of support isn’t considered a “material increase”?

What is probably the most revealing about how transparent we can expect a Clinton administration will be and how the Clinton Foundation will behave in the future, is that the State Department never received even one increased donation for review and when one is pointed out to them, we’re given some excuse that somehow it didn’t count. Of course, that’s what we’d expect from an entity bearing the name “Clinton.”

In response to calls for the Clinton Foundation to be shut down if Hillary wins the presidency next week, the foundation has said that it would stop accepting donations from foreign governments. And they wouldn’t lie or keep donations secret, so nothing to worry about. Nothing to see here. Nope.